Friday, January 2, 2009

Surveillance of Nuns

As noted elsewhere, I was the one person FBI Security Squad in South Bend, Indiana. Among other duties when Iron Curtain personnel came through Indiana on Indiana toll road, I, with possibly agent assistance, was to put a surveillance on the diplomats and record all their activities. During this period of time, as I recall, the diplomats were required to stay on main highways, such as the toll road and not enter any towns or cities thereabouts. Also, during this period of time, the youth and some of their elders, were greatly opposed to the Vietnam War and as such would often break-into the FBI sub-offices or draft board offices. I did not recall the year of the following event, but it was probably during the mid 1970s, in Pennsylvania the FBI sub-office had been raided and much of the written material on file taken therefrom.

The bureau had somehow learned that the perpetrators were two or three Catholic nuns had raided a draft board and were proceeding west via on the main highways in an old VW "beetle". Some other agents and I were assigned the task of meeting the Toledo, Ohio agents at the Ohio/Indiana border and take over the surveillance. All went well with the surveillance, but we later learned, a couple of the agents had attempted to lift fingerprints from the door of the ladies' restroom in one of the stops on the toll road. This happened to be a very busy time of the year and the demand on the toilet facilities was extraordinarily heavy. The agents in lifting the prints had to shut off the access to the ladies room and thus leaving the ladies who were already desperate for the facilities in even more desperate state. However, the agents did manage to lift some prints, but unfortunately, there was no way of telling whether those particular prints were those of the Catholic nuns.

The surveillance proceeded to the City of Chicago where the surveillance was to turned over the the Chicago agents.